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[Guide] Sion: The undead Arnie

Many people play Sion as a tank, which he is, by getting tank items... hahahahahaha. He already has one of the best health gain/level rates out of all heroes (I think the best but I never checked other heroes) and his passive ability is built towards negating damage he takes.

So I play Sion as a secondary tank with a dps build simply because he's awesome at it. Sion has one of the best possible abilities in the game (imo) Enrage. Not only does it give extra damage but it also gives the ability to gain max health with each kill. My build therefore relies on maxing out enrage early to get best use of it and complimenting it to make him a dps master.

The main reason I do this is because it's too easy for opponents to ignore the tank and go straight for the squishies. Therefore the tank has to appear to be a threat, which is why I load the cannon with squishy killing shells. If they don't try to kill you early then you'll be doing massive damage to them, combined with stuns and your ulti I'd say Sion is a really big threat.

Skill Build

Enrage

Cryptic Gaze

Enrage

Cryptic Gaze

Enrage

Cannibalism

Enrage

Cryptic Gaze

Enrage

Cryptic Gaze

Cannibalism

Cryptic Gaze

Death's Caress

Death's Caress

Death's Caress

Cannibalism

Death's Caress

Death's Caress

Items:

Boots of Speed -> There are three 'good' upgrades you can get for this. Berserker's Greaves, Ninja Tabi and Mercury's Treads. This depends completely on who you're facing. IF you're against a mostly physical dps team go Ninja Tabi. If they have alot of disables and magic dps then go Mercury's Treads. Finally if they have both or no dps (hahaha) then go Berserker's Greaves, the extra damage you get helps if there's another tank in your team (I normally go for the Berserker's Greaves because of this, hence why I said 'secondary' tank)

Health Potion x2-3 (if you think you'll go against alot of harassing then get 3)

Madred's Razors -> ALWAYS get these, they add to your dps and have the very awesome ability to instant kill creeps. Once you have these you can jungle occasionally because even though last hitting creeps is easier and gets you more health, if you do it enough then your lane partner will be underfed. Only upgrade these to Madred's bloodrazor if they have a few tanks otherwise it's easier to get...

Stark's Fervor -> lemme give you the clear cut version of why this is awesome. Lifesteal+attack speed+enrage+health regen aura+armor reduction aura+...=PROFIT! Don't even try not to get this item, it's awesome i.e made of win, filled with chocolaty goodness, is taking your mom to the prom.

After getting these items use your best judgement if you have any. If you need the ms get either force of nature or Triforce or maybe both even and go ape****!

Early Game

For me Sion is one of the easiest heroes to use in the early game. The extra damage from enrage makes it very easy to last hit and with a couple of pots and some good skill you can avoid getting harassed too much.

Your main strategy is to look scary, so taunt as much as possible and dance just outside the range of their tower (joking... :-D). Essentially they'll go after you, forget about your ally which'll set you up for some quick ganks early game. If your opponents don't utterly suck (something I rarely see) then just try to maximise the last hits you get. With this build there is absolutely no reason for you not to be getting almost every creep.

Tbh you only need one rank of stun, because at all levels it's gives a nice 2 second disable. Although I get it as quickly as possible (after enrage) because the damage it deals makes it easier to do quick ganks. Oh quick thing (I probably mentioned this with the items) DO NOT GET AP ITEMS, apart from triforce because it gives other much more tangible benefits and only if you think it'll be useful. You do not have the mana to spam stun and you can get damage much easier elsewhere. I laugh at noob Sion's who run AP builds, I dance of their corpses after I rip out their lungs on the fields of battle.

Mid game:
Gank, simple as. Lemme spell it out for you G A N K. You need the gold, so do your allies. At this point if you did the early game well you will have established yourself as a threat so they will target you, so unlike most tanks you have to be careful when you choose who to gank. Stun is your friend, use it to chase, to disable to initiate (it has a low enough cd so you can use it twice most of the time) and to close the distance. Seriously it's awesome, but not enough to justify getting it before enrage. Normally my assists and kills are about the same (both pretty high) and my deaths are quite low and I expect the same of you if you follow this build. One more thing, it's easier to gank if the enemy have no towers and physical dmg to towers is unaltered by criticals so occasionally if you see you can get almost the full duration of cannibalism while attacking a tower then go for it. It'll make things easier later on.

Late game:
Push, gimme a P, gimme a U, gimme a S, gimme a H whats that spell! PUSH!. Push harder than a pregnant woman. You have the technology, you've been made better, stronger, faster. We can do it.

Ok jokes aside, your ulti is really good at maintaining pushes. It gives you attack speed so you kill everything faster and it heals all allied units (champions and creeps) based on your damage. So it makes sense to have alot of damage and to attack alot. With your stun you can make it difficult for enemies to harass your wave and punish those who get too close. Also if they have a tank yelling "HIT ME!" then if you got Madred's Bloodrazor you can say "OK!" and consumate a S&M relationship where he dies all the time because your dps should be enough to take out any tank.

An interesting guide, but I don't know why you put so much emphasis on Cryptic Gaze in the early game. I personally only put 1 rank into it and then upgrade it last; it's a costly spell and you're mostly using it for the stun anyway, rather than the damage. Upgrading it only increases the damage and mana cost amount, not the stun duration, so you'll only run yourself out of mana faster. If you aren't focusing on AP, then the damage is somewhat negligible (okay, not negligible, but at least not enough to focus on).

Death's Caress is better to upgrade before Cryptic Gaze, IMO, because the shield amount does increase, increasing both your survivability and farming ability. Of course, mobs killed with this while Enrage is on also increase your HP.

In terms of items, I personally never build a physical Sion without some form of snare in the form of Frozen Mallet (or Triforce if you really want to).

I personally love using Sion, picked him up the other day thinking "meh, worth a try" played a few bot matches to get a feel for him, and then moved onto 5v5 with actual players...one of which actually asked if I was hacking because he didn't think I should be able to kill Teemo and Gangplank. I will agree with Madred's Razor, but I have to wonder why more people don't use it for other chars...1k gold is cheap no matter how you look at it and the insta killing 15% of the time is a lot more than it sounds.

An interesting guide, but I don't know why you put so much emphasis on Cryptic Gaze in the early game. I personally only put 1 rank into it and then upgrade it last; it's a costly spell and you're mostly using it for the stun anyway, rather than the damage. Upgrading it only increases the damage and mana cost amount, not the stun duration, so you'll only run yourself out of mana faster. If you aren't focusing on AP, then the damage is somewhat negligible (okay, not negligible, but at least not enough to focus on).

Death's Caress is better to upgrade before Cryptic Gaze, IMO, because the shield amount does increase, increasing both your survivability and farming ability. Of course, mobs killed with this while Enrage is on also increase your HP.

In terms of items, I personally never build a physical Sion without some form of snare in the form of Frozen Mallet (or Triforce if you really want to).

Just my take on things.

Really I up cryptic gaze early on because I usually harass them with enrage so when they're on half hp I can just stun and hit them two or three times and get the kill. Unless you upgrade it you'll have to chase them with shield which unless the first tower is destroyed isn't always a good idea since you can't chase very far.

I play sion as a tank with pretty good sucess He has two abilities that can save your team mates and thats canablism and gaze If your up front most of the time your going to get attacked first once your stun the first person that tries to get past you they usally start hitting you instead and when the fight really starts pop canablism and most of the time it turns out good I can see your point of not playing tank sion most people are just greedy ****s that only come out when the enemey has 1hp and call themselves god like for picking them off when they have no health or mana probably. These are the people that ruins your game cuz they run as soon as there is a threat at all. I just dont understand how you can harass at all early game he starts out with 175 mana one gaze and your pool is gone and carass is probably one of your best skills I couldnt see it being lvled last at all in any sion build imo